Husted soothes Electoral College tempest

Says his comments 'badly taken out of context'

Nov. 21, 2012

Written by

Barry M. Horstman

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted on Wednesday disputed online reports that he was proposing a dramatic overhaul of how Ohio conducts presidential elections, saying he does not favor scrapping the Electoral College’s winner-take-all format in favor of awarding electoral votes by congressional districts.

Husted, who frequently found himself engulfed in controversy throughout the presidential race, sought to extinguish another nascent political fire started by reports in recent days that he had called for division of electoral votes by congressional district in future years.

Such a plan would have awarded 12 of Ohio’s 18 electoral votes to Mitt Romney, even though he lost the state’s popular vote to President Barack Obama in the Nov. 6 election. Opponents were quick to attack it as a scheme to alter electoral rules in a way that would benefit Husted’s fellow Republicans, an accusation he repeatedly faced throughout this fall’s campaign.

Husted, however, says he never called for the change, arguing that his comments at an event in Columbus two days after the election were “badly taken out of context.”

“I’m not advocating it, I’m not suggesting it is a good idea, I’m not promoting it,” Husted said in an interview with The Enquirer.

Nationwide, all states except Maine and Nebraska award their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, with the presidential candidate who carries the state winning all of its votes. Maine and Nebraska apportion theirs to the winners within congressional districts and also award two electoral votes to the statewide winner.

If all states had awarded electoral votes the way Maine and Nebraska do, the 2008 presidential race between Obama and the GOP’s John McCain would have been much closer. Obama, who won by a landslide, 365 to 173 in the Electoral College, instead would have taken 292 electoral votes to McCain’s 246, according to an Enquirer analysis of 2008 election returns.

The issue arose from remarks Husted made Nov. 8 at Impact Ohio, a conference co-sponsored by the state Democratic and Republican parties in which more than 600 political, business and community leaders reviewed the election and major policy choices facing Ohio.

His comments, Husted said, came during a discussion over whether electoral procedures could be revised to dampen the kind of controversy seen in the recent election over early voting, provisional ballots and other matters.

“My response was that as long as Ohio was a winner-take-all state and maybe the most important swing state in the country, there is no election system that won’t be controversial,” Husted said Wednesday.

“I said if the sole goal was to make Ohio elections less controversial, you could fix redistricting so that districts are drawn fairly and more competitive, and then apportion our electoral votes according to congressional districts. That was just a comment, not a proposal.”

A story by Gongwer News Service supports Husted’s version of events, quoting him as saying: “You’re never going to fix the elections process in Ohio as long as we are the most important swing state.”

But the left-leaning political website Plunderbund offered a different take: “He says we should make Ohio less important in the election by dividing up our electoral votes by congressional district. ... And we thought with the election behind us, Jon Husted’s bad ideas were, too. We were wrong.”

What’s wrong, Husted insists, is that “stretched interpretation” of his remarks.

“I know some on the left have tried to make something out of this,” he said. “But there’s nothing there.

“I’ve got enough on my plate that needs to be done. ... This isn’t one of those things.”